RIGHT-WING SCI-FI.

RIGHT-WING SCI-FI. Dave Weigel has a good op-ed in The Los Angeles Times today about the new rash of right-wing sci-fi visions of dystopic futures under Islamist, radical leftist, or combined leftist/Islamist rule.

Be afraid, conservatives. If you survived the victory speeches of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and allowed yourself to think, "Things can't get any worse," get over it. They can.Two years from now, terrorists under the banner of the "Progressive Restoration" will take over Manhattan in a larger attempt to overthrow the government. Thirteen years later, President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore will haul out the good White House china for Osama bin Laden's state visit. By fiddling with your radio, you may be able to catch an underground broadcast by Sean Hannity. If you own a radio, that is; folks living in states that are under Sharia law won't even be that lucky.These aren't my fantasies or nightmares. All of these vignettes are ripped from science fiction thrillers that have hit shelves in just the last 18 months. Sharia comes to the United States in Robert Ferrigno's potboiler, "Prayers for the Assassin." In Joel C. Rosenberg's "Last Jihad" trilogy, a steel-spined U.S. president nukes Baghdad, then combats a Russo-Iranian axis, all in fulfillment of Scripture (or so we're told in the nail-biting third book, "The Ezekiel Option"). Hannity and his stone-jawed sidekick, G. Gordon Liddy, battle the Clinton restoration in Mike Mackey and Donny Lin's comic book, "Liberality for All." The Second American Civil War is breaking out in Orson Scott Card's "Empire" (book out now, video game on the way).

This is funny stuff -- and the ridiculousness of the visions helps to put in perspective (as Weigel does in his column) the circumscribed extent of today's actual Islamist terrorist threat relative to major national security threats of the past. Regarding the Islamic stuff (as opposed to the domestic lefty-baiting), it should probably be noted that the current president of the United States and fellow administration officials have expressed visions in real-life public addresses that, while obviously not as nutty, are perhaps in the same ballpark. We've seen ebbs and flows of the crazy-talk about caliphates and "the nature of the threat" from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld these past years (the latter: "Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia"), but it certainly has been a theme.

--Sam Rosenfeld